Italy
The South & the Islands
Naples, Pompeii, the Puglian heel, and Sicily's Greek temples under an active volcano.
Destinations
Naples
Loud, dense, Greek in origin, with the best pizza and the best archaeological museum in the world.
Matera
Cave dwellings inhabited for nine thousand years, evacuated in 1952 as a national disgrace, now a UNESCO site.
Palermo
Norman, Arab and Byzantine in the same building, with the best street food in Italy underneath.
Syracuse & Ortigia
Once the most powerful Greek city in the world, now an island old town with a Doric temple inside the cathedral.
Lecce
Baroque carved in soft golden limestone, in the heel of Italy, an hour from two seas.
Alghero, Sardinia
A Catalan-speaking walled port on Sardinia's northwest coast, with sea caves and Bronze Age towers inland.
Lipari & the Aeolians
Seven volcanic islands off Sicily, one of them erupting every twenty minutes, all of them on the UNESCO list.
Places to see
Everything recorded across The South & the Islands, in one list.
National Archaeological Museum
Everything good from Pompeii and Herculaneum, including the Farnese marbles and the secret cabinet.
Pompeii
A Roman town stopped in 79 AD: streets, bakeries, election graffiti and the casts of people who did not leave.
Napoli Sotterranea
Greek quarries turned aqueduct turned air-raid shelter, forty metres under the old town.
The Sassi
Cave dwellings inhabited for nine thousand years, evacuated in 1952 as a national disgrace and now UNESCO-listed.
Santa Maria de Idris
A rock church cut into a spur above the ravine, frescoed inside and reached by steps.
Cappella Palatina
An Islamic muqarnas ceiling over Byzantine mosaics, commissioned by a Norman king, in one room.
Ballarò
A thousand years of shouted commerce, and the best street food in Italy under the awnings.
Monreale
6,500 square metres of gold mosaic twenty minutes uphill, which most Palermo visitors skip.
Duomo di Siracusa
A 5th-century BC Doric temple with a cathedral built around it; the columns are in the walls.
Greek Theatre
Carved into the rock in the 5th century BC and still staging Aeschylus each summer.
Basilica di Santa Croce
A century of carving in soft golden limestone, which is why the facade looks like it is melting upward.
Grotta di Nettuno
A sea cave under a 110-metre cliff, entered by 654 steps down or by boat in calm weather.
Stromboli
A volcano that has erupted every twenty minutes or so for two thousand years, watched from the water at dusk.
Things to do
Fried pizza on the street
Older and poorer than the baked kind, folded into a wallet and eaten walking; the sign to look for is a queue of locals.
Palermo by street food
Panelle, arancine, sfincione, and — if you are brave — pani ca meusa. A thousand years of occupation in six snacks.
Inside a nuraghe
Su Nuraxi at Barumini is the UNESCO one, but there are seven thousand of these dry-stone towers and you can walk into many of them alone.
Stromboli, from the water
The volcano has erupted more or less continuously for two thousand years. Boats hold position off the Sciara del Fuoco after dark.
Journeys through The South & the Islands
Accommodation & restaurants
EuropeDoor lists neither, yet. Both are business listings rather than editorial entries: they need an operator who claims them, a verification tier and a way to keep prices current, and all three are blocked on the same thing as everything else commercial here. How listings will work · what is built and what is blocked.
Publishing a scraped hotel list would be quick and would be the first unverified thing on this site. That is the trade being refused.
The record
What this atlas holds about The South & the Islands. The counts are derived from the region's own destinations and move when it does; the seasons and the daily cost belong to Italy and are repeated here rather than looked up.
- Destinations
- 7
- Places recorded
- 13
- Experiences
- 4
- A full pass
- about 17 nights
- Best months
- May, June, September, October
- Typical day
- €70–175 per person
Food, events and practicalities are on the country page
They belong to Italy rather than to The South & the Islands, and repeating them on every region page is how two copies of a fact start disagreeing. Italy →